View source for Obelism

{{Short description|Editors' marks on manuscripts}}
{{More citations needed|date=September 2014}}
{{SpecialChars}}
[[File:Obelus variants.svg|thumb|Three basic variants of dotted obelos glyphs]]
'''Obelism''' is the practice of annotating [[manuscript]]s with marks set in the margins. Modern obelisms are used by editors when [[proofreading]] a manuscript or typescript. Examples are "stet" (which is Latin for "Let it stand", used in this context to mean "disregard the previous mark") and "[[dele]]" (for "Delete").

The '''obelos''' symbol (see [[obelus]]) gets its name from the spit, or sharp end of a [[lance]] in [[ancient Greek]]. An obelos was placed by editors on the margins of manuscripts, especially in [[Homer]], to indicate lines that may not have been written by Homer. The system was developed by [[Aristarchus of Samothrace|Aristarchus]] and notably used later by [[Origen]] in his ''[[Hexapla]]''. Origen marked spurious words with an opening obelus and a closing metobelos ("end of obelus").<ref name="metobelus">{{cite web|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07316a.htm|title=Hexapla|publisher=The Catholic Encyclopedia|access-date=August 27, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110904013754/http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07316a.htm|archive-date=September 4, 2011|url-status=live|df=mdy-all}}</ref>

There were many other such [[shorthand]] symbols, to indicate corrections, emendations, deletions, additions, and so on. Most used are the editorial [[Coronis (textual symbol)|coronis]], the [[paragraphos]], the forked paragraphos, the reversed forked paragraphos, the [[hypodiastole]], the [[downwards ancora]], the [[upwards ancora]], and the [[Diple (textual symbol)|dotted right-pointing angle]], which is also known as the [[Aristarchian symbols#System of Aristarchus|{{Transliteration|grc|diple periestigmene}}]]. Loosely, all these symbols, and the act of annotation by means of them, are '''obelism'''.

These nine ancient Greek textual annotation symbols are also included in the supplemental punctuation list of [[Universal Character Set|ISO/IEC 10646 standard]] for character sets.

<gallery>
Image:Coronis.png|The [[coronis (textual symbol)|coronis]] marked subsections.
Image:Paragraphos.png|The [[paragraphos]] was used for breaks.
Image:Hypodiastole.svg|The [[hypodiastole]] separated words before the use of spaces.
Image:Diple-periestigmene.png|The dotted [[diple (textual symbol)|diple]] was also used for dubious lines.
</gallery>

==Modern encoding==
{{special characters|section}}
[[Unicode]] encodes the following:
* {{unichar|2058}}
* {{unichar|2059|note=Greek pentonkion}}
* {{unichar|205A}}
* {{unichar|205B}}
* {{unichar|205C}}
* {{unichar|2E0E}}
* {{unichar|2E0F}}
* {{unichar|2E10}}
* {{unichar|2E11}}
* {{unichar|2E12}}
* {{unichar|2E13}}
* {{unichar|2E14}}
* {{unichar|2E15}}
* {{unichar|2E16|note=diple periestigmene}}

Some of these were also used in [[Greek orthography#Punctuation|Ancient Greek punctuation]] as [[word dividers]].<ref>[http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/punctuation.html ''Punctuation''] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141120120157/http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/punctuation.html |date=November 20, 2014 }}</ref> The two-dot punctuation is used as a word separator in [[Old Turkic script]].

==See also==
* {{Annotated link |Annotation}}
* {{Annotated link |Aristarchian symbols}}
* {{Annotated link |Dagger (mark)}}. A horizontal form of the dagger mark was used an obelus.
* {{Annotated link |Diple (textual symbol)}}
* {{Annotated link |Marginalia}}
* [[List of proofreader's marks]]
* [[General Punctuation]]{{snd}}Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Palaeography]]
[[Category:Punctuation]]
[[Category:Ancient Greek punctuation]]


{{AncientGreek-lang-stub}}